“Jake’s Gift,” a one-woman show written and performed by Julia Mackey, is a powerful tribute to Canadian veterans, especially those who participated in the World War II D-Day landing on Juno Beach. Inspired by her trip to Normandy in 2004 for the 60^th anniversary of D-Day, Miss Mackey and Director Dirk Van Stralen created Juno Productions to present and tour this piece across Canada. As Americans we hear mostly about Omaha Beach. It’s good to be reminded that our neighbors to the North also had a major part in the landings.

The two main characters are Jake, a veteran in his 70s who has returned for his first visit to Juno Beach since the war and Isabelle, a lively and inquisitive 10 year-old French girl. She has, as she says, “. . .the most important job in the world.”As they gradually become friends, Isabelle helps Jake in finally being able to come to terms with his past.

Julia Mackey relies mostly on body language and her voice to delineate the believable character changes between the irrepressible Isabelle and the initially grumpy Jake. We also meet Isabelle’s Grandmama and a Canadian teacher. Using only a bench, a small table and a suitcase Miss Mackey makes both the story and relationship easy to follow. She’s ably assisted by Gerald King’s sensitive lighting, especially in the scene where Jake puts on his uniform jacket. When he snaps a salute, we catch a glimpse of the young soldier who enlisted so many years ago. …

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  Photo: Tim Matheson

A thoughtful and sensitive colllaboration between lone  performer, Julia Mackey and director Dirk Van Stralen has produced a more than memorable performance  dealing with the 60th anniversary of the  bloody events of  the  D-Day landings on the shores of Juno Beach in Normandy, France. While revisiting the precise spot where it all took place, Jake a crusty old veteran , incarnated by the actor,  limps onto the stage and begins this luminous encounter.  Playing both the old fellow who feels guilty for not returning to see the remains of his brother   since he was killed  during the invasion,  and 10 year old Isabelle, a strongwilled imaginary young French girl,  Julia Mackey   opens an incredible healing process for those who are suffering as both  characters  meet on the beach where a touching friendship developes. .   

Director Dirk Van Stralen has put the actor in the foreground,  refusing to distract us with news reels, or images from the period, or  journalistic sound effects or  violent   lighting.  Julia Mackey stands alone at the centre, looking straight into our eyes,  facing us like a proudly defiant young woman and a talented  actress. Dressed in a gender ambiguous cap and pants, she easily and smoothly transforms herself from the

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Photo:  Maria Vartanova

War dwarfs personal relationships. Set against the sense of duty to country, an extra-marital affair seems “tiny and rather cheap,” says the woman at the centre of the love triangle in Terrence Rattigan’s Flare Path. This is particularly so when her husband is a serving RAF officer, risking his life on every bombing mission, and her lover is an aging matinee idol.

Rattigan wrote the 1942 drama while he was an air gunner, flying Coastal Command during the Second World War. Thus, stiff-upper-lip dialogue that makes light of the constant danger, through jolly, matter-of-fact conversations and silly nicknames for the flyers rings true. So does the sense of dread hanging over the women who are left behind. One drinks and pretends not to worry. A second is irritable and withdrawn. The third struggles with her moral dilemma between passion and duty, trying to decide whether her husband or her lover has the greater need of her.

The emotional restraint of most of the characters in Flare Path, reflected in the understatements in the text, can and should heighten the emotional connection and anguish with the threat of death always at hand.

Sadly, the insipid Ottawa Little Theatre production does not do this. Instead, as directed by Klaas van Weringh, the emotion is so suppressed that the result is frequently awkwardness as two characters preserve their distance from each other and keep their voices level. The latter may be partly an attempt to maintain the appropriate accents, but much of the time it seems to be at the director’s behest.

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Photo:  Tim Matheson

Grumpy old man meets charming, precocious 10 year old girl. The two strike up an unlikely friendship. Girl, generally sunny but with a sensitive side, helps man deal with a burden from his past. Man enriches girl’s life. Each goes their separate way.

In the hands of a lesser artist, such a tale could be twee and trite. In the hands of playwright/actor Julia Mackey, it’s rich, true and deeply moving, a solo show that runs just 65 minutes but leaves you replete, wanting neither more nor less of the gift you’ve been handed.

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Ottawa Citizen, Octobert 28, 2015   Photo. Deen Van Meer.

 

Maybe Ontario’s disgruntled public school teachers should take up dance. It sure helps the put-upon workers in Newsies express their collective will when battling their dastardly overlord.

Mind you, the teachers would have to log a few hours of practice to be as nimble and emotive as these dancers. Splendidly choreographed by Christopher Gattelli, the newsies – those young, persistent men who once hawked newspapers on the mean streets of many cities – leap, flip and tap their way through some terrific routines as they tangle with Joseph Pulitzer, the heartless publisher of the New York World.

Pulitzer, faced with declining circulation and pushed by his own greed, has decided to up the price he charges to the newsies who must buy each paper they sell. Already living somewhere well short of the luxurious, the lads rally behind fellow newsboy Jack Kelly (played with cocky charisma and fine voice by Joey Barreiro) when he decides enough is enough and leads his comrades in a boisterous and risky walkout. Pulitzer has not only money but the force of law and municipal politics on his side. Fortunately, Kelly has the force of his own moral rectitude, not to mention slowly evolving social perspectives on the shame of child labour, behind him.

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Photo: NAC English Theatre 

The English Theatre at the NAC has opened their season with a production of “The Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God,” written and directed by Djanet Sears. It’s the story of Rainey, a doctor, her husband Michael, a preacher, and her elderly father Ben. “Adventures . . .” deals with Rainey’s inability to accept her daughter’s death and Ben’s attempts to uphold the town’s black history.

We who live near the US/Canada border and go back and forth often tend to think of ourselves as pretty similar. However sometimes there are striking differences in cross-border sensibilities. One example is Newfie humor – Americans just don’t get it. The subject matter of this play is another. Americans have been seeing plays about race relations and black history since the 1970s, for example August Wilson’s brilliant “Century Cycle,” ten plays that chart the African-American experience throughout the 20^th century. There’s also Alvin Ailey’s iconic piece “Revelations,” choreographed in 1960. In “Adventures . . .,” the cast marches to protest graffiti on their church wall. In the US Deep South, black churches are burned down. All this contributes to my viewpoint that “Adventures . . .” says nothing new.

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Ottawa’s Fresh Meat festival leads audiences through an evening of raw, risky and experimental theatre from new and emerging theatre artists. Over two weekends, and featuring two entirely distinct programs, this showcase of roughly twenty-minute trial by fire shows brings creativity to the foreground. Above all else, this is a testing ground for the next generation of artists.

Fresh Meat provides a rare opportunity for theatre markers. It is what a “staged reading” might be for non-text based theatre. And just like at a staged reading, while the shows may lack technical polish, they bring plenty of inspiration. From performances based off of found text, to poetic soundscapes, and even entirely improvised plays, Fresh Meat 4 is all about artistic variety.

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Photo: Allan Mackey

It is not surprising that a thread of anger runs through Love! Valour! Compassion! given that Terrence McNally’s award-winning play had its première in 1994. This was a time when the scourge of AIDs was felling many, primarily homosexual men, and being HIV positive was a death sentence.

Buzz and James, two of the eight characters in Love! Valour! Compassion!, are near death. By contrast, long-time couple Arthur and Perry have escaped AIDs and mark their fourteenth anniversary together in physical health, as they repair the health of their relationship. Meanwhile, aging choreographer Gregory must come to terms with his inability to dance as he once could and deal with a recurring speech impediment. His balance is restored when he is with his young partner, Bobby, who is blind but undaunted by his disability. Another regular member of the group that meets at Gregory’s home is the angry and bitter John. With him is Ramon — handsome, virile, passionate and promiscuous — the catalyst who upsets the equilibrium the rest have achieved over the years.

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The Great Canadian Theatre Company has opened their season with “Generous” by Michael Healey. The play is the first of a trilogy that includes “Courageous” and “Proud,” the latter produced by GCTC a couple of years ago.

The play’s structure is fractured. The four scenes in Act I seem to come from different plays. The first, set 15 years ago, features a frantic group of Parliamentarians trying to avoid a no-confidence vote. The second, also 15 years ago, introduces a venal oil executive. In the third, now in the present, a judge and young law clerk both try to justify a one-night stand and in the fourth a couple has an odd gymnastic quarrel involving a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Some of these plot lines come together in Act II, but only structurally rather than emotionally and don’t go anywhere. “Generous” is basically about seeking power, both political and sexual, but leads to no new understanding of the various motivations behind the search. …

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The underlying question raised by Michael Healey’s social satire Generous seems to centre on whether political office, private enterprise or sexual connections are about public service or personal advancement.

The unnecessarily complicated structure — presumably meant to underline that a through line is not required for the playwright to make his point — is set in three offices, a judge’s chambers and two private homes over 15 years. Through three occasionally connected story lines and a cross-gender casting requirement in the opening scene, a series of selfish characters indicate that generosity results by accident, when of use in satisfying the greed of the perpetrators.

The grotesque, cartoon-like opening scene set in the Prime Minister’s Office shouts neither murder nor mayhem can obscure that power is all that matters. A slight shift in the next scene gives sex equal influence on the power ladder and even offers a nod to the influence of journalism. There follows a quirky view of the judiciary and an alternate sexual involvement. The first act closes with a short mimed sequence featuring an abusive relationship, while the second act shifts the lens on power, politics and sexual liaisons to demonstrate even less generosity of spirit. …

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